Author: Robert Barrimond

The Fed’s $7 Trillion Secret Loan Program

The Fed has some ‘splainin’ to do! Continue reading →

The Fed’s $7 Trillion Secret Loan Program:

 

Eliot Spitzer on the aforelinked scandal revealed by Bloomberg:

Imagine you walked into a bank, applied for a personal line of credit, and filled out all the paperwork claiming to have no debts and an income of $200,000 per year. The bank, based on these representations, extended you the line of credit. Then, three years later, after fighting disclosure all the way, you were forced by a court to tell the truth: At the time you made the statements to the bank, you actually were unemployed, you had a $1 million mortgage on your house on which you had failed to make payments for six months, and you hadn’t paid even the minimum on your credit-card bills for three months. Do you think the bank would just say: Never mind, don’t worry about it? Of course not. Whether or not you had paid back the personal line of credit, three FBI agents would be at your door within hours.

Yet this is exactly what the major American banks have done to the public.

Or, as Jon Stewart asked, “How the f*** is it that Martha Stewart went to jail?”

 

(Via Daring Fireball)

Gruber finds the perfect quote.

 

Dell drops Streak 7, backs out of Android tablets in US

Why can’t PC manufacturers release a credible iPad competitor? Continue reading →

Dell drops Streak 7, backs out of Android tablets in US:

Like HP, Dell is believed to be putting most of its faith in Windows 8 tablets for the US market. It won’t have this option until mid-to-late 2012, however, and will essentially concede its share of mobile tablets for a year.

(Via MacNN | The Macintosh News Network)

Why can’t PC manufacturers release a credible iPad competitor?  Execution of course has been lacking by announcing tablets so early the market had moved on to more advanced tablets, but that begs a serious question: Why is Dell behind?

Dell drops Streak 7, backs out of Android tablets in US

Why can’t PC manufacturers release a credible iPad competitor? Continue reading →

Dell drops Streak 7, backs out of Android tablets in US:

Like HP, Dell is believed to be putting most of its faith in Windows 8 tablets for the US market. It won’t have this option until mid-to-late 2012, however, and will essentially concede its share of mobile tablets for a year.

(Via MacNN | The Macintosh News Network)

Why can’t PC manufacturers release a credible iPad competitor?  Execution of course has been lacking by announcing tablets so early the market had moved on to more advanced tablets, but that begs a serious question: Why is Dell behind?

Facebook and Privacy

Facebook and Privacy:   Farhad Manjoo, writing for Slate: The only sure way to keep something private on Facebook is not to post it to Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg would never acknowledge this, but I think it will ultimately benefit both … Continue reading →

Facebook and Privacy:

 

Farhad Manjoo, writing for Slate:

The only sure way to keep something private on Facebook is not to post it to Facebook.

Mark Zuckerberg would never acknowledge this, but I think it will ultimately benefit both his site and its users if we adjusted our expectations about “privacy” there. You should approach Facebook as cautiously as you would approach your open bedroom window. However restrictive your privacy controls, you should imagine that everything that you post on Facebook will be available for public consumption forever. If you follow this simple rule, you’ll never be blindsided.

The article’s sub-head is a bit unfair, though:

You’re as much to blame for the site’s privacy woes as Mark Zuckerberg.

People are confused about Facebook privacy settings because Facebook wants them to be confused. It’s deliberate. That’s all on Facebook.

 

(Via Daring Fireball)

I’ve long suspected this.  By making security a moving target, Facebook has made your potential control over privacy is ever improved but vastly outstrips your actual ability to implement that control.  The sagest advice is thus: “You should approach Facebook as cautiously as you would approach your open bedroom window.”  It’s all public folks.

Facebook and Privacy

Facebook and Privacy:   Farhad Manjoo, writing for Slate: The only sure way to keep something private on Facebook is not to post it to Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg would never acknowledge this, but I think it will ultimately benefit both … Continue reading →

Facebook and Privacy:

 

Farhad Manjoo, writing for Slate:

The only sure way to keep something private on Facebook is not to post it to Facebook.

Mark Zuckerberg would never acknowledge this, but I think it will ultimately benefit both his site and its users if we adjusted our expectations about “privacy” there. You should approach Facebook as cautiously as you would approach your open bedroom window. However restrictive your privacy controls, you should imagine that everything that you post on Facebook will be available for public consumption forever. If you follow this simple rule, you’ll never be blindsided.

The article’s sub-head is a bit unfair, though:

You’re as much to blame for the site’s privacy woes as Mark Zuckerberg.

People are confused about Facebook privacy settings because Facebook wants them to be confused. It’s deliberate. That’s all on Facebook.

 

(Via Daring Fireball)

I’ve long suspected this.  By making security a moving target, Facebook has made your potential control over privacy is ever improved but vastly outstrips your actual ability to implement that control.  The sagest advice is thus: “You should approach Facebook as cautiously as you would approach your open bedroom window.”  It’s all public folks.

‘We Need A Leader Not A Reader’

Cain shows off his mental bonafides.

‘We Need A Leader Not A Reader’:

Seriously, I see this dude talk and I hope no young black kids are listening. If you can president without knowing a thing about the world, why should the standards for eighth grade be any higher?

(Via Ta-Nehisi Coates :: The Atlantic)

True embarrassment.

The Reason

The Embarrassment of Riches

9-9-9: The Most Massively Regressive Redistribution of Taxes Ever Seriously Considered

Jared Bernstein (via Mark Thoma):

Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan is Classic Republican agenda.

Blogsy

Testing out Blogsy on my iPad. So far not quite so good. Crashed twice and I haven’t owned it for more than 20 minutes. Why is WYSIWYG blogging so hard?

An Ugly Balance Sheet Indeed

Mark Thoma:

This is What a Balance-Sheet Recession Looks Like, and It’s Not Pretty:

Stephen Gordon says these graphs make him grateful that Canada is not the US:

This is what a balance-sheet recession looks like, and it’s not pretty, Worthwhile Canadian Initiative: I had never heard the expression “balance-sheet recession” before this recent episode, and it’s time I got around a comparison of the household balance sheets of the US and Canada. Of all my “Canada is not the US” posts, this is the one that makes me most grateful.

The quarterly data goes back to 1990, and it’s good to put the last few years in context. I’ve scaled all the series by price (the consumption spending deflator) and population. Here is the net worth series:

Wci1

There’s been talk of a Japan-like ‘lost decade’ in the US; that seems optimistic. US real per capita net worth is back to what it was back in 1999.

The US problem is on the assets side:

Wci2

The effect of the recent recession on assets in Canada is similar to that of the demise of the dot-com boom.

Aggregate household liabilities have also fallen in the US, but as can be seen in the net worth data, not by enough:

Wci3

Few will be surprised to learn that the collapse of US house prices had an important effect on US asset holdings:

Wci4

Although the fall in US housing assets was more dramatic, other assets lost value as well:

Wci5

And lastly (although if someone can think of another interesting graph, I may add it), here is real per capita housing equity:

Wci6

The US data go back to 1952, so I was able to check the last time the real, per capita value of US housing equity was at its current level. Even after looking at all of these graphs, the answer astonished me: 1978. Nineteen seventy-freaking-eight.

(Via Economist’s View (Mark Thoma).)

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